Renewable Natural

Resources Foundation

2017 Congress on Contemporary issues
in

forest and wildland management

Molly Cross

Molly Cross is the Climate Change Adaptation
Coordinator for the North America Program of the Wildlife
Conservation Society. Her work focuses on bringing
together science experts and conservation practitioners to
translate broad-brush climate change adaptation strategies
into on-the-ground conservation actions. Cross has
contributed to several national climate change efforts
including the U.S. National Climate Assessment, the
Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies guidance on
incorporating climate change into state wildlife action
plans, and the Climate-Smart Conservation guide to climate
adaptation. She is the Science Advisor to the WCS Climate
Adaptation Fund, which supports applied projects
demonstrating effective interventions for wildlife
adaptation to climate change.

Cross earned a Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy and
Management from the University of California, Berkeley.

AMY GIBSON-GRANT

Amy Gibson-Grant is Vice President of Campaign
Development of the Ad Council. The Ad Council has some of
the longest-running and most successful public service
campaigns in history, such as the Wildfire Prevention
campaign featuring Smokey Bear. Since 2008, Gibson-Grant has
led and managed marketing communications campaigns such as
Public Service Advertising for Wildfire Prevention and
Re-connecting Kids with Nature (Discover Your Forest).

Gibson-Grant earned a Bachelor's degree in Communication
Studies from New York University.

SARAH GREENBERGER

Sarah Greenberger oversees the National Audubon
Society’s national policy team and coordinates
Washington-based strategies. Greenberger also leads
Audubon’s Working Lands program which focuses on building
public and private partnerships to advance collaborative
conservation solutions on landscapes dominated by private
farms, ranches and forests. Greenberger came to Audubon
from the U.S. Department of the Interior, where she spent
five years driving strategy and policy for the agency as a
counselor and senior advisor to Interior Secretaries Ken
Salazar and Sally Jewell. In that role, she was
instrumental in shaping the pioneering Greater Sage-grouse
conservation strategy working closely with Audubon,
Western State Governors and other stakeholders. She has
also served as Legislative Counsel to Senator Benjamin L.
Cardin and was a clerk to Judge David S. Tatel on U.S.
Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Greenberger obtained her Bachelor's degree from Williams
College and her Juris Doctor from the University of
Pennsylvania Law School.

Sarah Mccaffrey

Sarah McCaffrey is a research forester at the
USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station in
Fort Collins, Colorado. She conducts and coordinates
research to better understand the social dynamics of fire
management. As more people move into high fire hazard
areas, their active involvement in fire management will be
central to successful efforts to reduce the hazard.
McCaffrey’s research helps clarify the reality behind much
of the conventional wisdom about public beliefs and
actions in relation to fire and fuels management, and what
shapes those beliefs and actions.

McCaffrey is also currently responsible for a National
Fire Plan grant examining social acceptability of fuels
treatment methods. She has helped initiate almost two
dozen studies in a variety of ecological and geographical
settings across the country, examining a range of topics
including what shapes acceptability of prescribed fire and
thinning, why people do or do not implement defensible
space practices, and social issues around post-fire
restoration. Additionally, she is involved with the Fuels
Planning synthesis project, a national effort to
synthesize current scientific knowledge on fuels
treatments from both the ecological and social
perspectives and provide it to managers in accessible
format.

McCaffrey holds a Bachelor's degree in international
relations from Stanford University, and an M.S. and Ph.D.
in wildland resource science from the University of
California–Berkeley.

V. ALARIC SAMPLE

V. Alaric Sample is a senior fellow and
president emeritus of the Pinchot Institute for
Conservation in Washington, D.C. He served as president
there from 1995-2015. He has worked in the public and
private sectors, including work in resource economics and
forest policy as a senior fellow at the Conservation
Foundation, and later as vice president for research at
the American Forestry Association.

Sample earned a Ph.D. in resource policy and economics
from Yale University. He holds an MBA and a master of
forestry both from Yale, and a bachelor of science in
forest resource management from the University of Montana.

Cecilia Romero Seesholtz

Cecilia Romero Seesholtz has served with the
Forest Service for 33 years, working in forests from
Oregon to Arizona to Michigan. Most recently she has
served as the Forest Supervisor for Boise National Forest
since 2008.

Seesholtz holds a Bachelor's degree from the School of
Forestry at Northern Arizona University.

tony tooke

Tony Tooke is Chief of the USDA Forest Service.
He has worked for the USDA Forest Service since he was 18
years old. Most recently he served as Regional Forester
for the Southern Region. Previously as Associate Deputy
Chief for the National Forest System, Tooke was the Forest
Service executive lead for Environmental Justice; Farm
Bill implementation; and implementation of the Inventory,
Monitoring, and Assessment Improvement Strategy. Another
priority included implementation of a new planning rule
for the National Forest System. Tooke has also served as
director for ecosystem management coordination, deputy
director for economic recovery, and assistant director for
forest management.

Prior to 2006, Tooke served as deputy forest supervisor
for the National Forests in Florida as well as district
ranger assignments at the Talladega NF in Alabama, the
Oconee NF in Georgia, and the DeSoto NF in Mississippi.
His other field assignments were timber management
assistant, other resource assistant, silviculturist, and
forester on six ranger districts in Mississippi and
Kentucky.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in forestry from
Mississippi State University. He was in the Forest
Service’s inaugural class of the Senior Leadership
Program, and he has completed the Senior Executive Service
Candidate Development Program.